White Christmas
by VinnyLB
Summary: Caught in the middle of a snowstorm while hiding from the NSA, Zee and Ro discuss everything from the meaning of Christmas songs to their own lives. Finished!
1. White Christmas

_White Christmas_

by Vanessa

Summary: Caught in the middle of a snowstorm while hiding from the NSA, Zee and Ro discuss everything from the meaning of Christmas songs to their own lives.

Notes: This is my second TZP Christmas fic, but it's not connected in any way to "All I Want for Christmas." This one should be a little deeper, slightly religious, with a little less fluff. Well, for me, anyway. As far as the continuity goes, this story would be set somewhere towards the end of the second season.

Disclaimer: TZP still isn't mine. Anybody know how much WB wants for the rights to it?

Chapter One: White Christmas

Even Bennet's team took a break from their cross-country robot chase for Christmas, although Zee was quick to warn her that the NSA was still watching for them at all times, and should they make their presence known to anyone, Bennet and company were only a short flight away. That was fine with her, Ro thought with a grin as their hovercar turned onto a narrow side street. She and her synthoid companion had absolutely no intention of causing trouble for anyone, for at least a few days.

She stared out the passenger side window, watching the passing mountain landscape intently. The icy road was lined with snow-dusted evergreens, and the same frozen whiteness covered the ground. The cracked pavement of the road was already difficult to navigate, and the ice and constant snow made driving even more dangerous, but she had complete faith in Zee's abilities. No doubt there was some line of programming in him that had been written specifically for such situations, and if not, his surprisingly human sense of intuition would pull them through yet again.

Ro tore her eyes away from the scenery to steal a glance at him. Yes, Zee was intuitive and highly intelligent, more so than he usually led others to believe. Sometimes his endearing naivete was genuine, such as when he questioned her about some new and confusing facet of human behavior. Most of the time, though, his clueless nature was faked, an old habit from the days when she had still been a little nervous about the thought of traveling with a dangerous government weapon. This childish persona had been designed by Zeta to put her at ease, and it vanished the instant circumstances required him to become what he was built to be. The killer robot no longer frightened her, but she still hoped he would never lose his sense of curiosity.

Zee caught her gaze and smiled, looking impossibly patient regardless of the fact that this trip was taking twice as long as it should have. "We're almost there," he promised in response to her unspoken question.

"There" was a rented cabin high in the snowy mountains, away from cities and scientists and unrelenting government officials who would abandon their holiday plans the moment the renegade robot and his accomplice surfaced. Only a year ago, she would have been bored to death by the very idea of such a remote vacation spot, so far away from any sign of human life or technology. Now, since meeting Zee and taking his quest for freedom as her own, she awaited the few days of peace and quiet with an excitement that she hadn't felt in years. With a wide grin, Ro turned back to the window and cleared a small circle on the foggy glass with one gloved hand.

"A white Christmas," she sighed quietly as the snow continued to fall.

Zee heard her, but didn't feign cluelessness this time, didn't ask what the term meant or where it had originated. Instead, he opted for the more complicated human-nature question. "Is it important to you, for this to be a 'white Christmas,' Ro?"

"Yes." She was silent for a moment– not annoyed, but thinking of how to explain her answer. "It adds to the atmosphere. You know all that information you downloaded last year?" She smiled. "Trees, decorations and lights and gifts... and the food..." The food was clearly one of Ro's favorite parts of the holiday. That explained the groceries in the backseat, enough to feed a small army, that she had insisted they buy after learning that, yes, Zee could cook!

"Christmas at the Morgan's was always like that," she continued, her voice taking on a nostalgic, wistful tone that he rarely heard from her. "They would go out and get the biggest tree they could find, a real one..." Zee refrained from commenting on the wastefulness of cutting down a tree for such a purpose. "...And Tiffy and I would decorate it while her parents worked in the kitchen. And it always, always snowed." She stared out the window again with a far-off look in her eyes and a half-smile.

"Family," Zee said softly, "is an important part of Christmas, too, isn't it?"

In an instant, the smiling and nostalgic Rosalie Rowen was gone. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became as hard and cold as the ice outside. "I wouldn't know."

"But the Morgans..."

"Were nice to me. Great people. But they weren't my family."

He paused a moment, disappointed that the moment had been so easily shattered, then dared to speak again. "Is that why you refused to celebrate last year?"

The year before, only months after their meeting, Zeta had learned about the significance of December 25th. Ro refused to discuss it with him, and Zee, with his innocent curiosity, had pounced on any information he could find, from books to the Net to random people they happened to pass on the street. Although she had been embarrassed at first, Ro eventually became amused by his acquisition of useless Christmas facts. She hadn't objected _too_ much when he insisted on buying her a gift. A snowglobe, he remembered now with a grin, to make up for the fact that they had spent the season chasing Selig's shadow across California.

"Last year . . . " She frowned. "Last year I was thinking too much about the past couple of years I spent at the girls' home. They didn't really _do_ Christmas. Not like the Morgans did, at least. One small tree, barely decorated, a few gifts donated by local charities, and . . . no sense of family at all. Back then, Christmas was just one more reminder of how alone I really was." Her eyes dropped to her hands, folded in her lap now.

Zee removed one hand from the steering wheel, and placed it over hers. "But you aren't alone anymore," he reminded her, assuring her as he had a thousand times before that she still had him, and he wouldn't leave her even if she _would_ let him.

Her own smile returned, and she moved away from the window to lean her head against his shoulder. "Which is why we're celebrating this year, tin man. Because I finally have a family to celebrate with me."


	2. Winter Wonderland

_White Christmas_

by Vanessa

Notes: Sorry this one is so short. ; The next two chapters will be posted tomorrow, but for now... sleep. Meanwhile, go read Iglika's beautiful Christmas story, "Zee's Heart."

Chapter Two: Winter Wonderland

At any other time of the year, Ro would have been disgusted by the idea of staying in a tiny wooden cabin in the middle of nowhere, especially when there were plenty of perfectly good (expensive) hotel rooms available. But when Zee pulled the hovercar up into the icy driveway, the sight nearly took her breath away. The rustic little cabin was surrounded by fir trees, and everything lay under a thick blanket of glittering snow. It looked like something from a Christmas card, and she couldn't wait to see how it looked inside.

"Do you like it?" Zee asked, grinning. He knew the question was unnecessary; the look on her face told him more than words ever could.

"It's beautiful," she breathed. "Zee... Let's _live_ here!"

He laughed, startling both of them. Zee didn't laugh often, and when he did, it sounded forced, mechanical. But here, in this place with Ro, his human side came more easily to him. The cabin really was beautiful, and he filed her joke away into a special area of his memory, records that would be retrieved again after they found Selig and his freedom. Then, he thought with a small smile, he would give Ro all the things she had ever said she wanted. A house like this. The family she lost. Anything that was within his power to give.

Zee managed to gather all the bags of groceries from the backseat, carrying them effortlessly to the front door, which Ro unlocked and opened for him. The inside of the cabin was dark and cold, and she fumbled around in the dark for the light switch– yes, this was _definitely_ as old-fashioned as the brochure had promised. Warm yellow light filled the room, revealing a couch, old and worn but very comfortable-looking, an overstuffed armchair, a dusty bookcase with _real_ books, and a large fireplace. She laughed, watching her breath cloud in front of her, then turned to Zee. "The first thing we need to do when we move in here is to have central heating installed," she joked, and Zee smiled.

"I think the fireplace adds to the atmosphere," he said, using her own reasoning against her. He set the last of the groceries down on the kitchen table and walked back into the main room to join her. "Let's go out and get some firewood." Predicting that the idea of going back outside wouldn't appeal to her, he added, "We can pick out a Christmas tree, too."

Ro was out the door before he finished his sentence, dragging him along and laughing. Clearly his prediction had been wrong. Something about the snow made going outside in freezing temperatures perfectly okay. He accessed his file of information relating to winter, viewing image after image of children building snowmen, throwing tightly packed balls of snow at one another. He saw entire landscapes frozen and transformed, crystalline icicles clinging to the edges of roofs. With a childish grin, he dropped to the ground.

Ro panicked at first, then began to laugh as he moved his arms and legs back and forth, clearing a small area in the few inches of snow. "Zee, what are you _doing_?"

"A snow angel," he explained, standing up and taking a step back. "I read about them last... year." The impression he had made was strange, an angel with a narrow pill-shaped head, large torso and no waist, wings that were too long and too thin. The hologram, he realized, wasn't solid enough to leave an imprint on the ground, and it served as a painful reminder of what he really was and what he would never be.

Ro's laughter faded to a warm smile, and she reached out to grab his hand. "It looks great, Zee. Just proves my theory about you right." Her guardian angel in a robot body, she thought, but it was too sentimental and silly to say aloud. Zee asked what she meant, but she dragged him away from the robotic angel in the snow, pretending she didn't hear him. He had learned from experience that when Ro Rowen behaved this way in these situations, it usually meant that she had paid him some compliment that was too emotional for the invulnerable girl to repeat or explain. That was good enough for him.

They didn't gather much firewood, as Ro had to carry it back while Zee dragged the massive tree she had chosen. How he was actually going to fit the thing through the door, let alone in the tiny front room, was anyone's guess. But Ro had liked this one, and Ro was the only reason his conscience wasn't nagging him about the waste of a tree, so he humored her. When the tree was finally set up in the corner after minimal rearranging, it looked as if it belonged there.

She went in search of decorations while he started the fire as if he had done it a hundred times before, grateful once again for his obsessive observance of holiday customs the previous Christmas. Ro returned, carrying a box that the last guests likely left behind, pulling out a few frayed red bows, broken glass ornaments, and a strand of multicolored lights that probably didn't work anymore. She had also brought a package of candy canes bought with the groceries. The finished tree looked far better than he thought it would.

The bedroom was too cold, so Ro fell asleep on the couch that night, her head on a pillow in Zee's lap. He sat still for several hours, committing every second, every detail of the day to memory, creating several backups so that, in the event that Bennet caught him again and tried to erase the last two years of his life, he would have enough time to save this one, at least.

When he recharged, he dreamed, an unusual occurrence that had been happening more frequently lately, something he didn't dare to tell Ro about. In his dream, they lived in a beautiful house in the mountains, a cabin with central heating. Ro pulled him out into the snow again, and it was _cold_. He didn't see it as a numeric representation of temperature, a computerized readout of Celsius and Fahrenheit in the corner of his vision. Instead, he _felt_ it, icy pinpricks from head to toe, a cold numbness in his face and hands. He laughed, as if amazed by his own humanity, and dropped to the ground.

The snow angel looked perfect this time.


	3. Let It Snow

_White Christmas_

by Vanessa

Notes: This was originally going to be one long chapter, but I've divided it into two parts. I'm semi-agnostic, so coming from me, this is a slightly religious chapter. And, of course, it isn't one of my TZP fics if I don't discuss robot souls. ;)

Chapter Three: Let it Snow

When he awoke, he was almost sure he could feel the last human sensations of cold fading away, leaving him numb, unfeeling metal. The sense of confusion and awe that had come with the dream were still as real as ever, though, and he wondered about its meaning.

Ro was still lying on the couch, the thin blanket pulled tightly around her, but obviously not helping. She was shivering violently, and relighting the dying fire became his first priority. After adding a few more dead branches to the glowing embers and igniting them with his laser, he walked to the couch and carefully lifted the sleeping girl, to move her closer to the fire.

Years of paranoia caused by being both a runaway orphan and a government fugitive had made Ro highly alert and a very light sleeper. She awoke abruptly when Zee picked her up, but once she was aware of what he was doing, she didn't seem to mind, just smiled sleepily and leaned her head against his chest. "What time is it?"

He slowly sat down in front of the fireplace, relieved when she didn't try to move away, curled closer to him instead of sitting on the floor beside him. "Almost 5:00," he replied softly, fighting back the more accurate but less human calculation of exact minutes, hours, and seconds. The human sensations from his dream were long gone, but he wanted so much to maintain that illusion, if only for her sake. Sometimes it seemed that Ro had a tendency to forget that he was only a machine. He envied her for that. To forget he wasn't human, even for a moment...

"Turn the tree back on, Zee." Ro's voice interrupted his daydreams. "I want to see it again."

He glanced up at their Christmas tree as if noticing it for the first time. He hadn't realized, upon waking from his dream, that the multicolored lights were out. They had been on when he and Ro had gone to sleep, and, shifting slightly to see the electrical outlet behind the tree, he could see that they hadn't been unplugged. "I didn't turn the lights off, and they're still plugged in... I think they might be broken."

Ro frowned, now fully awake, and pulled herself away from him and crossed the room. A flick of the light switch explained everything. "Great!" she exclaimed in a tone of voice that suggested that she didn't really consider the situation "great" at all.

"The weather must have caused a power failure," Zee said helpfully. "I don't think it's stopped snowing since we arrived."

This news did nothing to improve her mood. If anything, it made matters worse, and he regretted that their peaceful vacation would be cut so short. "We can't stay here." She was pulling on her shoes now, reaching for her coat. "If we don't go, we'll be snowed in."

"I think we already are. The hovercar is more than likely trapped in the snow, and even if we could get to it, the magways would be inaccessible in this weather. We should stay here... at last until the roads are cleared."

"Meanwhile, I'm going to starve to death. No electricity means no cooking. What am I supposed to do about _food_, Zee?"

He smiled, knowing that Ro was being overly dramatic. "Not everything you bought has to be cooked, and I could even use my laser on some of it. Since I don't eat, you will have more than enough food for several days... though I doubt we'll be here that long."

She didn't seem convinced, and continued to look for excuses. "Uh-huh. And if the feds find us before that?"

"Even if the NSA learns that we're here, their van can no more navigate these roads than our car. They have no way to reach us."

She stared at him for a moment, fighting a smirk, realizing now that she was fighting a hopeless battle. "Firewood," she said, after a few seconds of silence. "We're running out, and there's no way we'll find any more in all this snow."

"We don't need it." The hologram of Zee flickered and vanished, revealing Zeta's synthoid frame, and the two plates on either side of his chest swung open, the same heating unit he had used to save Doctor Selig glowing with a warm orange light. Zee flickered back into place, grinning smugly.

Ro sighed, defeated, but was smiling now. "You think of everything, don't you?" she laughed, dropping to the floor beside him. She grabbed his arm, pulling him closer, and rested her cheek against the metal sphere that served as his shoulder. "All right, Zee, you win. Let it snow."

Her words, combined with the present circumstances, triggered a memory of more information acquired the previous year. Ro's last comment was an obvious reference to a Christmas song of the same name, one that was perfectly suited to their current situation. He began to review the lyrics aloud, softly at first, then growing louder as the song progressed. He didn't realize that he was singing until he noticed Ro watching him, and trailed off at the words "As long as you love me so..."

"Zee," she said with a grin, "I didn't know you could sing."

"I learn quickly." This was mostly true. He had studied an entire book of Christmas carols last year, committing the lyrics and sheet music to memory. He knew every note, and could adjust the pitch of his voice to match, creating a flawless singing voice. In a way, he supposed it was cheating.

Ro didn't seem to mind, though, and that was all that mattered. "Sing another one. You downloaded all those songs... You have to have a favorite."

She was right, and, feeling a little self-conscious now, he began to sing again. Softly, at first, singing almost reverently, his voice raising dramatically at the chorus, and she listened in awe. "'O Holy Night,'" she said with a smile, after a moment of silence. "A religious song, Zee? I would've never thought of you as the spiritual type."

"I'm not," he answered with a small, sad smile. "The ability to believe in that which one can't see or prove is... uniquely human. Even those who choose not to believe in anything at least still have that option. A machine... a machine analyzes the data provided and immediately comes to one conclusion: the stories are illogical, impossible, the foolish attempt of humanity to explain what it doesn't have the resources to truly comprehend. There is no room for doubt, no allowance for faith. Just an unfeeling, unimaginative answer."

Ro was not exactly the religious type, but she had to admit that there was still, as he said, room for doubt. A robot didn't have the option of questioning itself, its beliefs. The words "religious," "agnostic," "atheist" couldn't be applied to a soulless robot any more than it could be applied to any other machine. But Zee, who at least recognized this flaw separating the mechanical mind from the human soul, was anything but an ordinary machine.

"What about you?" Her voice was almost a whisper. "What do you believe?"

He paused, an it took a moment for him to realize that a machine would not have hesitated in its answer. That thought alone brought the smile back to his face, and he sounded almost happy when he admitted, "I don't know. I want to be able to question everything and come to my own conclusions, without robotic logic interfering."

"You're already getting there, Zee," she said, grinning. "That was actually... a really human answer. Almost what I would have said, I think. Don't be so quick to compare yourself to one of those 'unfeeling' machines. You're more than that. It's like... you're stuck somewhere in between robot and human, and you're getting more human every day."

Another long silence that seemed to last for hours, a relaxed and comfortable quiet, in no way awkward. Ro watched the last of the embers of the fire as they died, and Zee watched Ro... and for the first time since his dream, he almost felt human.


	4. Frosty the Snowman

_White Christmas_

by Vanessa

Notes: This was an unusual chapter for me. Keep reading to find out why. ;) And thanks to Iglika for giving me ideas! Again, everyone go read her story!

Chapter Four: Frosty the Snowman

When Ro stood suddenly and left the room, he was confused; had their conversation upset her in some way? But she was back as quickly as she had left, a large, worn book in her hands. She sat down beside him again, closer than before, and let the book fall open in her lap. "It got too quiet in here," she explained with a grin, "and I've decided I like your singing."

He laughed, recognizing the musical notes on the page to which she had opened. "Ro, I downloaded several books of songs. I already have an extensive database of–"

"Humans don't have databases in their heads, Zee," she argued. "We have memories. Horrible human memories that forget words, and how songs start, and who got what on the tenth day of Christmas. Tonight, you're not a robot. Just for tonight, you're one of us, a fallible, flawed human. Now, sing."

He laughed, ordering his mind to delete all files on Christmas carols, and opened his mouth to sing the song she had chosen. Then he closed his mouth again, and glanced at her with a mischievous smirk. "I already sang, twice. It's your turn."

Her face flushed a bright pink color, a rare blush from the tough Ro Rowen. She didn't argue, though, just turned her attention to the book and began to sing. He refused to let his synthoid brain analyze her voice, to find anything imperfect about her. To him, she sounded like an angel, and he suddenly wanted desperately to believe in angels.

They took turns singing, Zee with his religious "Silent Night" and "The First Noel" and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" He was surprised to discover that, even without his memorized sheet music, he could still sing as well as before. Ro sang the more secular carols, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Winter Wonderland," and "Frosty the Snowman." He made her laugh with intentionally naive questions about the physical impossibility of flying reindeer, let alone one with a glowing red nose.

When her last song ended, he almost demanded an explanation of how _anything_ could bring an inanimate snowman to life, refusing to believe her account of the magic hat, but seeming more satisfied with the idea of an unexplainable Christmas miracle.

Then came "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which, when you think about it, Ro told him, was really the most ridiculous song of all.

"Five golden rings, I can understand," she said, "but what's with all the birds? And then it just gets weirder after that... I mean, who gives someone _those_ kinds of gifts?"

Zee grinned. "They at least deserve credit for creativity. Those are very... original gift ideas."

"Okay, smart guy," she laughed. "What would you get _your_ 'true love' on the twelve days of Christmas?"

He was silent again, and this time, it _was_ uncomfortable. She really hadn't meant for him to put this much thought into a rhetorical question, and she wondered if he would actually come up with twelve different items.

"I would..." he finally answered, slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. "...I would find her family. I would get them back for her."

She stopped breathing. She could hear her heartbeat, pounding like the drum in one of Zee's songs, and she searched his face, his eyes, for any sign of clueless innocence. He only looked a little embarrassed, a look that eliminated any possibility that he didn't understand everything his answer implied.

"You're forgetting something, Zee," she said quietly, stopping him before he could explain himself or take back what he had said. She reached out, covering his hands with her own, and smiled. "She already has one."

He grinned, hesitating before he spoke again. "And... what about you, Ro? What would you give your--"

"Human," she interrupted a little too quickly, then laughed, embarrassed. "I would... find some way for him to be human."

"Now _you're_ forgetting..." He smiled, raising one hand to touch her cheek, cool metal against her skin. She supposed it should have felt strange, but it didn't. "Tonight, I _am_ human."

"You are..." And before she could stop herself, she was closing the distance between them, letting the book slide from her lap as he pulled her forward and kissed her. She could have sworn that the hand against her cheek was warm now, soft, rather than cold, hard titanium. And, when she returned the kiss, it was as if there was no hologram to pass through, but a face, a real, _human_ face. She wondered if he noticed, and she wondered how it was possible...

...And she decided not to question it.

She didn't remember falling asleep, and she woke up late in the afternoon, curled up against Zee on the couch. She was warm, although the fire had died long ago, and the warmth wasn't coming from Zee's internal heating unit. She rested her head against his chest again, smiling at the sound of a steady heartbeat, and doubted the heating unit was even there anymore.

They left the next morning, the day after Christmas; after the snow had stopped, the magways had been quickly cleared. Zee had to have noticed the change she could see in him, but aside from a brief, enquiring glance when he couldn't change holograms, neither of them dared to question it. He grinned when they stepped outside, the icy air hitting them.

Ro briefly wondered what shape his snow angel would take now.

End

Notes: When I started writing this fic, I had planned on a slightly more serious Christmas story with some religious themes. The "Twelve Days" conversation was actually the first thing I planned, after hearing the song too many times at work. After the first two chapters, though, "White Christmas" kind of took on a mind of it's own. This wasn't how it was originally going to end, but I'm happy with it– I think it's the first time Zee has been turned human without scientist involvement. :D It's a little on the religious side, so I hope no one was offended (I'm actually agnostic, so it was unusual for me to write something like this, anyway), and I hope everyone has a happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/December 25th!


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